


When the Hurt and the Healer Collide

by southernbookgirl



Series: Trials and Triumphs [2]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Ellick, F/M, Fictober, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Realization of Feelings, Romance, Sequel, fictober 18
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-09 21:33:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16457570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/southernbookgirl/pseuds/southernbookgirl
Summary: “The course of true love never did run smooth.” ~William Shakespeare“Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.” ~Thomas Moore





	1. Denunciation

**Author's Note:**

> Where does the responsibility fall when the pain of one person affects not just them but those closest to them? (Fictober #27: “Remember, you have to remember.”)

_“You cannot make everyone think and feel as deeply as you do. This is your tragedy...because you understand them, but they do not understand you.” ~Unknown_

* * *

“It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault,” Ellie Bishop repeated over and over again like a mantra as she lingered in the waiting room to see if her partner Nick Torres was okay. Her friend and fellow agent, operational psychologist Jack Sloane, kept telling her she needed to be hopeful, and gosh, was she trying.

Bishop was desperate to forget the blood. Even though she grew up with three older brothers, she had never been fond of human injury. Every injured calf or horse on her family’s Oklahoma farm growing up made her heart break and pushed her to help the injured animal heal, whether or not it was possible or practical. Even with a job like hers, the sight of blood always made her a bit squeamish. Although, in this moment, with what she had just witnessed, Ellie would give anything to not ever have Nick that hurt, that helpless, again. She wanted the image erased from her mind. However, she scoffed to herself, thinking,  _You have to remember, with a memory like mine, it’s hard to unring a bell._

Ellie pulled her knees to her chest and buried her face into her legs. Sloane saw that Bishop was shutting down. The psychologist started to move a comforting hand off of Kasie’s head and toward Ellie, but Donald “Ducky” Mallard, their intelligent but gentle soul of a doctor and medical examiner, shot her a look as if to say,  _‘You look after the others. I got this.’_

He quietly moved next to Ellie and placed a cautious hand on her shoulder. She did not move at all. Instead, she snapped at him, like a flash of lightning in the still of night. “Don’t touch me.”

“Eleanor, my dear,” the Scotsman coaxed whilst taking his hand off her. “Nicholas is going to be okay.”

“You don’t know that,” Ellie muttered, her eyes focused on the waiting room’s tiled floor pattern.

“You’re right.” The doctor smiled weakly. “I don’t know for certain, but I do have faith – in modern medicine and in a higher power that he will be fine. Plus, our Nicholas Torres has never given in without a fight. And know this, my dear girl, none of what happened is your fault.” With this, Ducky bestowed a gentle kiss on her temple; he then moved quietly back to his spot near the back wall with his friend and fellow doctor and medical examiner, Jimmy Palmer.

Bishop tried to maintain a reserved demeanor, to stave off the worry from her teammates and whirl of emotions bubbling inside of her, but the tears started falling before she even recognized it was happening. As they fell, Ellie collapsed into herself. Her face contorted into a depiction of pure despair, and the fear and worry from the past hours consumed her. McGee and Sloane both sat against the wall, one on either side of Ellie. Tim placed a gentle hand on Ellie’s shoulder, while Sloane enveloped her friend in a warm, soothing embrace. Desperate for comfort, Ellie buried her head in Sloane’s arms and continued to cry out her stress and apprehension for her partner. As she cried, Sloane and Tim exchange a silent glance; they are unsure how to handle the fallout of losing Nick. Sloane had only heard the effect her ex-husband Jake Malloy’s affair and their subsequent divorce had on her, but Sloane witnessed firsthand the heart-wrenching trauma and exacting revenge Bishop had after Qasim’s murder. Thus, the team are as fearful of the news that the doctor might have on their special agent and friend as Ellie seems to be.  _Who knows what will happen if Nick succumbs to his injuries. Bishop might not ever reemerge in the world, whole or happy again_ , Jack somberly thought.

Ellie silently prayed to whatever God or powerful being is out there, praying for her partner and best friend as she had never before.  _‘Let him be okay. I don’t know what I would do if he left me… Please, just give me the chance to say what I wanted to but have been too afraid to do. Dear God, please don’t take him. I love him, God. Don’t take Nick from me.’_  And with this, Ellie slipped further into Sloane’s embrace, ultimately succumbing to her weariness in an exhausted and fitful sleep.

Director Vance, seated near Ducky and Palmer on the room’s opposite end, has seen Eleanor cry but never to this degree exhibiting the deep and throbbing grief and pain. Thus, it takes a minute for his mind to accept that this is really happening. They were really in a hospital, a hospital trying to save their friend, and Ellie was breaking down, or she had been until she fell asleep. Now, she is in some sort of... fog or dream that she so desperately wanted to escape from. Vance heard the technical term on occasion from Sloane or the psychologist he saw after his wife’s murder some years before. However, it was times like these that he wished to block out.

While Vance had been through the ringer himself in the previous months, the pain of losing a teammate was something entirely different from the pain of losing a spouse or child. The loss, the trauma is real, but how you try to fight it – or deny it – differed depending on the person or circumstance. Nevertheless, Gibbs’ MCRT group was one he is close to, and the pain of a fallen agent was one he would ever quite become accustomed to. If only Nick were here – to make a snide remark, crack a joke, occasionally use his Latin roots for fun or flair – moments like that made Vance smile. Heck, with the serious person Eleanor Bishop was, it took a lot for her to open up. Nonetheless, Nicholas Torres, the director realized early on, had a way of breaking through those barriers. The memories brought a bit of momentary happiness to the director. Nick’s personality may be that of a jokester and a suave ladies' man, but even Eleanor would even smile or laugh at something he did or said. He just had that effect on those around him.

But, Vance sadly recognized, Nick wasn’t here. If Torres were healthy right now, Jimmy would not be shaking in a corner gripping Kasie’s hand. Kasie would not be holding onto the chair as tightly as she could, wondering how much more pain and heartache she would have to see regarding her new group of friends and colleagues. Then, Ellie definitely would not have collapsed into some kind of hug from one half of the “will-or-won’t-they” couple, Sloane, with Gibbs seated stoically on the psychologist’s other side. Well, they weren’t officially a couple, but Vance believed his team leader and in-house psychologist had a connection that he had not seen between Gibbs and another woman in quite some time. Nick might say that Gibbs still had a chance – that he has to chase after what he wanted. Torres might even get that goofy grin on his face as he mentioned that it would definitely work for him (with it being an open secret with whom his affections lay). No, if Nick was well, none of the team would be present in this forlorn, unwelcome reality that they were sadly and forcefully dealt.

* * *

_“I think anyone who opened their heart enough to love without restraint and subsequently were devastated by loss knows that in that moment you are forever changed; a apart of you is no longer whole. Some will never again love with that level of abandon where life is perceived as innocent and the threat of loss seems implausible. Love and loss, therefore, are linked.” ~ Donna Lynn Hope_


	2. Ruminations, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How does one ever understand the purpose of something in the midst of a deep ache and pain that ravages your body and soul from the inside out?

_“Love is pain, but if you really love them, fight the pain.” ~Unknown_

* * *

The team didn’t even notice when Doctor Bordeaux, the physician who had been treating Nick since his admittance hours before, walked over, motioned Gibbs over to the nurses’ station, and held a serious, whispered conversation with the team leader in a corner of the ER waiting room at St. Catherine’s Medical Center. After a few minutes, the physician turned around and, as if she held the weight of the world on her shoulders, slowly and soundlessly strode back through the ER doors to the operating wing.

With the doctor’s departure, Gibbs sank down into the nearest chair and mentally assessed the injury report that the doctor had given him about Nick: multiple bruised and broken ribs; rope burns on his arms, neck, forehead, and legs; a broken left ankle; a severely sprained right wrist; a deep gash on the front right side of Nick’s head near his temple; and several small fractures in the cartilage of the larynx from the strangulation attempt by Austwell that could cause permanent damage to Nick’s voice. And, Gibbs sadly thought, that include not many bruises and contusions Nick had all over his body from the abuse he endured while held captive by Austwell nor did it take account of the damage caused by a couple of bullets that had hit the Latino-American agent in the fight to break him out.

Gibbs did not know whether to tell the team about the status of Nick’s injuries or leave it be till he had a fuller report on Torres’ condition. Sure, they deserved to know that their vociferous, comical yet complex friend and colleague may never talk again if he even lived through the night, but Gibbs would not worry them with that detail now. So, the federal agent and surrogate “father” to the MCRT crew stood up and, almost as a ghost, strolled over to Ellie. He knelt down and put a comforting hand on Bishop’s knee. She glanced up at him, startled by his sudden appearance; the look in her eyes communicated the grief and anxiousness she felt and the endless questions she had about the status of her partner’s health and well-being.

“They’re doing all they can. Nothing is for sure yet.” She nodded tersely in response. “It’s not your fault, Ellie,” Gibbs promised her. “Austwell had been planning this kidnapping for months. Torres just got the short, unlucky stick in the draw.” The tone of Gibbs’ voice lowered several octaves, the only indication anyone had seen thus far of the grief and anger he felt about their current circumstances.

“It is my fault,” she countered softly but surely. The team leader and veteran agent saw the guilt she felt was eating her alive, as if a disease ravaged her body, spreading from the darkest depths out to the light. As though a terminal diagnosis, Bishop was fully convinced that she hurt Nick. Had she gone with him out to check out leads for the case, he might not have ended up in this mess. _It is because I was not there when he needed me, that I was not there as his friend, as his partner, that he is hurt and possibly dying alone in some operating room at this very moment_. Bishop bemoaned these thoughts mournfully to herself. Gibbs gradually lowered himself in a chair next to Sloane, and Jimmy, Ducky, and Kasie moved to sit across from them. Even McGee and Vance shifted a little bit so that their small family could be together. _My family may be with me,_ Ellie noted _, but it won’t change the facts – a bullet was wasted on Nick that should have been for me._ In the confusing chaos in her soul, that fact rang louder than any bell on earth: she was convinced her neglect of Torres meant her feelings for her partner was a fatal attraction – a blow – from which neither would ever recover.

* * *

 _“...[W]hen it seems as though you are facing nothing but difficulties see it as an invaluable opportunity to experience the greatest joy that you can!  For you know that when your faith is tested, it stirs up power within you to endure all things. And then as your endurance grows even stronger it will release perfection into every part of your being until there is nothing missing and nothing lacking.”  
_ _ ~James 1:2-4 (The Passion Translation) _


End file.
